Page:Harris Dickson--Old Reliable in Africa.djvu/77

 black mustache, with hands of girlish softness, nobody would pick Lykoff for a man who had toiled in Siberian mines, and now dared a second exile. That was fifteen years ago; and to-day Gregory Lykoff was only thirty-one. It behooved him to be cautious. In the first place he should have avoided any steamer which, like the Olga, flew the Russian flag. But Guinea Ryan, the American boiler-maker, brought him his imperative order, and he must sail at once to Alexandria. Even then Lykoff would never have trusted himself on board the Olga if he could have foreseen that the implacable Gargarin—known as the "Bloodhound"—and his shrewdest assistant, would climb the Olga's companionway five minutes before she sailed. It was then no surprise for Lykoff to find Gargarin assigned to him as a cabin-mate. So Lykoff grimly determined to merit the tribute which his government paid so young a man.

In St. Petersburg many intercepted letters lay waiting for this key before they could be read by the police; and the lives of many comrades depended upon him. The young Russian had been in serious situations before, and a French novel in his lap did not distract his attention from the Bloodhound, who leaned against a life-boat with eyes upon the sea. Gargarin was never squeamish in his methods, and Lykoff knew that he would